"Sure," said Bea. "Karen’s right. Law is nothing but competition. Listen, come over for supper Sunday evening and talk to Harry about it."

That Sunday they sat out in the kitchen, talking as Bea worked on supper. This time Mairin was wearing slacks and a turtleneck. She’d spent the day studying in jeans and a sweatshirt, motivated to stick with it by the promise of an evening out. She’d finished the fifty contracts pages just in time to shower and change.

Harry and Bea, too, were casually dressed. In retrospect, Mairin realized that she’d felt quite formal the first time she’d come, at Christmas.

"Bea tells me that you’re concerned about the competitiveness in your class." Harry smiled at Mairin. He was drinking a beer but had poured sherry for the two women.

"The way we’ve reacted to these practice exams is astounding," Mairin said. We’re jealous of the fellow that got the highest grade, though we won’t really admit it. These are just practice exams, we keep saying."

"Sure," Harry said cheerfully. "Just wait until May when you take the real final. If you think there’s agonizing now.

Mairin shuddered. "I’ve been thinking about that. Our contracts course is three hours a quarter. The only real test comes at the end of the year. That means that nine hours worth of credit hangs on the results of a three hour exam. And we’ll have eight hours of civil procedure then, too."

"It will be quite a week, I can assure you. But look, that’s the way law is. You spend months preparing a trial. It goes maybe a week, tops, and in comes the verdict for all that time"

Mairin bit her lip, thinking. "But school doesn’t need to be like that. There are some differences between the classroom and the courtroom."

"I’ll give you that. A classroom situation simply trains you. Most of the people who’ve made it into the law school classroom have the ability to be good lawyers. The few who don’t--either through lack of brain power or lack of discipline--will be weeded out. But in a courtroom, someone is going to lose, even though both lawyers may well be competent."

"You know, one thing is beginning to worry me. It seems to me that the adversary system seems to work only if the lawyers are equally competent. Is that true in most cases?"

"Not always. You might have a very young man up against an older man who’s simply gotten more years of experience. Or maybe one man is simply smarter. Yeah, that’s a problem," said Harry, sounding as though it didn’t bother him in the least. "So that’s where the competitiveness comes in. That’s what makes you try your darndest."

"It just doesn’t seem right to me," Mairin said, "but I can’t tell you why."

Bea spoke up. She’d been building a gorgeous salad with spinach, lettuce, mushrooms, radishes, bean sprouts, etc. "It’s not what you’re used to, Mairin. Social work is more caring. Law isn’t."

"That’s as it should be," said Harry. "Social work serves certain functions in our society. Law serves others. Law is about disputes. Nobody is happy when there’s a dispute involved. Law is resolution."

"Come on," said Bea. "We’re ready to eat."

The conversation continued, on and off. Mairin found herself wondering how Harry could be so perfectly at home with a system that made her so uncomfortable. Maybe it was time, as simple as that. After all, this was only her second quarter in law school.

As Bea was serving dessert, she looked at Mairin closely. "You’ve been looking awfully tired recently. Are you feeling okay?"

"Yes, sure. I am tired, but I don’t know how you get around that."

"Your workload at the agency is tough, too, isn’t it?"

"Well, it’s busy. And dealing with people who are under pressure themselves isn’t easy. This week I have two new intakes to see. And tomorrow is Mrs. Gallagher. Oh god."

Bea laughed. "That woman is never satisfied."

They fell into agency shoptalk for about half an hour. Then Mairin said she’d have to go, that Mrs. Gallagher awaited the next morning.

After Mairin had left, Bea said to Harry, "She looks rundown."

"She looks okay to me."

"Well she usually has more sparkle."

Harry contemplated that statement, it being his personal observation that Mairin was a lovely girl with plenty of life. "I’ll keep my ears open around court," he said. "Working down there would teach her more about law in a week than law school can in four years."

Mairin’s routine kept on. Unlike Hanson, who had simply given back the bluebooks en masse, Morgan announced that he was scheduling individual sessions of fifteen minutes with each student. At the break he posted time sheets for the next three Saturdays. Mairin signed up for the last time slot on the second Saturday, feeling a little embarrassed that everyone would figure she wanted to get some extra time.

It wouldn’t be to talk law, though. It would just be to talk. Mairin had tried to explain it to Linda. "From the moment he walked into the classroom, I had this eerie feeling that I was seeing myself. That I moved the same way, talked the same way. I don’t know. . ." her voice trailed off. "It’s so strange." It had taken Mairin a while, really, to analyze that sense of the familiar that she had had about Michael Morgan the first night in the classroom. It was as she had just told Linda. Michael Morgan reminded Mairin of herself. It was the intensity. When she was involved with an idea, a train of thought, she had the same absorption, which did not preclude clowning with the subject, if helpful.

"I think you’re developing a real case on him," Linda said. "You talk about him a lot. You always have some story or other about his class."

"There always is some story or other about his class. If I were restricted to telling you about Hanson’s class, you’d die of boredom. And I could be dead of boredom just hearing myself talk."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mairin sat in the lobby of Morgan’s firm talking to the other student who was waiting. They were discussing the decor.

"This must have cost big bucks," Dave had observed.

"Yes," said Mairin. "I was looking at a couch like that one over Christmas vacation. It was a couple thousand." She laughed. "I stopped looking."

The effect of the waiting area was positive, comfortable but tasteful. The blue carpeting was thick. The prints on the wall were engravings of courtroom scenes. "Nice," she said, just as the receptionist called Dave for his appointment.

The receptionist’s desk was in a small alcove to the left, behind a semi-open partition. The receptionist was a young girl, about twenty, Mairin thought. She had been typing up until now, but Mairin realized the typewriter keys were still. The receptionist was peering around the partition.

"You have to work on Saturday?" Mairin asked sympathetically.

"Yes," said the girl, "but it’s okay. I just fill in. I go to school during the week and come in here on Saturdays."

"Does everyone in the office work on Saturdays?"

"Pretty much. Everybody’s more informal though. You see them walking around in their shirt-sleeves. Except Mr. Morgan,of course. He always wears a suitcoat, or at least a jacket." She laughed.

Mairin, herself, had chosen her clothing carefully. On the usual Saturday she’d be in jeans and a turtleneck, working at her desk. And, in fact, she had started the day just that way, but for her late afternoon appointment she’d changed. She’d spent a fair amount of time deciding what to wear. She wouldn’t dress up, as she did for work, but it just wouldn’t do to wear jeans. She’d compromised on a denim skirt and a freshly ironed linen blouse. It looked relaxed but not overly casual. It was sort of fun, Mairin thought, dressing up for a man. A good, harmless flirtation wouldn’t hurt, she told herself. Her last serious involvement was not yet far enough in the past for her to want more than a flirtation. Morgan’s it, she thought.

"Does Mr. Morgan ever relax?" Mairin asked the receptionist.

"He’s always pretty formal, but he’s nice, too. If you have a problem, he’ll help you with it. You know, if you’re having trouble with your landlord or something legal. We all envy his secretary. He‘s always a gentleman, even when he’s angry. Most of the rest of them can be so rude. If we ever talked to them that way, we’d be fired in a minute. What’s Mr. Morgan like as a teacher?"

"He’s great," said Mairin. "Torts is kind of an interesting course to begin with, but he’s so enthusiastic and intense that it’s really memorable. He has such a sense of humor."

"Susan, that’s his secretary, says that she thinks he’s always had a secret desire to be a stand-up comedian."

"He probably would have been very successful. I wonder why he chose law."

"Law is his life. He works twenty-four hours a day, and then he took on this teaching, right after he split with his wife."

Mairin was intrigued. Come on interviewing skills, she prayed. Surely I didn’t take all those casework technique courses for nothing. "How long ago was that?"

"Well, let’s see. This is the second year he’s taught, so it’s been two years. We were all surprised. He and Harriet were such a lovely couple."

"What happened?"

"Oh, I guess she got tired of his working twenty-four hours a day. Their kids were in college, and she felt all alone. It was her idea, I guess. He was really broken up about it. She went out and found an apartment. I guess she’s going to school .

"Are they getting a divorce?"

"No. I guess that she wanted one, but he wouldn’t hear of it."

Just then the door opened, and Dave came out, followed by Michael. "Well, it’s time for the last appointment," Michael said. "Come on in."

As she sat down, he said, "You and Peg getting along?"

"Is Peg your receptionist?"

"Yes."

"Sure. We were just gossiping."

He almost looked worried for an instant. "Well," he said, "it’s four on Saturday afternoon. How are you?"

"Fine," she said, "but I’ll feel better when I find out how I did."

"You did okay." He picked up the bluebook and handed it to her. She looked through it, noted the remarks. "Oh," she winced at one point. "I missed that one assault."

"Lots of people did," he said. "It was a good question."

"Did you make it up or did it really happen?"

"Oh, a little of both. I took the basics from a case we had a few years ago, but the creative touches were mine."

Mairin laughed. "If this one had come into court as it is on the exam, the judge would have realized that it was a tort lawyer’s dream."

"Wouldn’t that have been crazy?" Michael liked the idea. "But your honor, this case makes Palsgraf look simple"

"Palsgraf only had a set of scales. You had a lamp post, a chair, and a baseball bat."

"We win" Michael shouted. "Three to one." He leaned back in his chair, laughing. "How do you like my office?"

Mairin had been absorbing it gradually. It was attractive. The waiting room had had a subdued quality. Michael’s office was clearly not subdued. There were colors. Some came from a large painting, some came from a large ceramic vase of a bright orange, and then it seemed that the drapes were a plaid instead of the expected beige. On the wall were some family pictures. "You did this yourself?"

"Yes," he said. "I’m trying to change my image a bit. What do you think of it?"

"The vase has to go," Mairin said. "Everything else can stay."

"I made that vase myself " he yelped. Sometimes he had a very boyish quality.

Mairin laughed. "It looks like it," she said.

"I dated a woman once who had a potter’s wheel. I thought it was kind of nice.

"What did she think?"

"She never said."

"Tactful woman

He laughed. "So you did okay on the torts exam. How do you like the course?"

"It’s fun," she said. "It sure livens up the week. We need a slide down the bannister after Hanson on Monday and that fool legal history on Wednesday."

"A slide down the bannister. I like that. Morgan’s course is a slide down the bannister. Does that make it sound too easy?"

"No. It makes it sound exciting. Breathtaking."

They were both laughing. "You’ve got a great outlook for a personal injury lawyer. Think about it."

"First of all I have to make it through this first year."

"You’re not seriously worried about that, are you?"

"I don’t know. There’s so much work."

Michael sobered a little. "I admire you guys," he said. "You work all day and go to school at night. That’s tough."

"Guys?" she asked.

"Ahhhhh," he said. "Missed that one. Just missed it. Old habits die hard. My wife would have loved that. She’s always accused me of being sexist."

"What does she do?"

"She’s going to be a social worker."

"That’s where I’m coming from."

He looked very surprised. "You’re leaving social work to be a lawyer?"

"Yes."

"That’s amazing," he said and seemed deep in thought.

Mairin spoke after a moment. "Well, look, it’s four-thirty on Saturday afternoon. I’ll let you close up shop."

"I’ll walk out with you."

"You know, it’s really nice of you to take the time with us. Hanson just threw the bluebooks into a pile and let us sort them out. What a winner."

"You’re really funny," he said. "Do you need a lift anywhere?"

"My car’s at the Terminal," she said.

"Mine’s right here in the building. I’ll drop you off. Just hang on until I get my briefcase."

When he dropped her off, they were still laughing. Neither could really have explained why.